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37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

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Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#271

Post by vladvasiliu »

humanwhosits wrote: post #198
30367286 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home. Absolutely. Additionally, even getting to that set of regular, forced interactions necessarily consumes the limited time those people would have to pursue those social activities outside the home. That is, it's hard to have a…

Hybrid has all the downsides of office work, it's just less hours of it

Not strictly all. You still have more time on the days you work from home, which you could use to be social.

But yeah, if everyone is "hybrid", then the pressure on the housing market is unlikely to go down enough, which means that many people may find themselves in living conditions poor for remote work, which means they're more likely to go more often to the office, which means they're back to where they started...

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#272

Post by mprovost »

samarthr1 wrote: post #174
achenet wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not if those jobs entail good written or even oral communication skills. Native English speakers have a huge leg up on Indians and Eastern Europeans in this regard. For example, I imagine Coca-Cola is willing to pay more to have the person writing their ad copy be someone who has been immersed in American culture from birth.

A good portion of Indian engineers speak good English. Anecdotal evidence only though.

Ironically, if you google "is speak good english grammatically correct" there are a lot of articles debating whether it's ok, or if "speak English well" is better. This is the kind of subtlety that's hard to understand for non-native speakers.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#273

Post by Cd00d »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #62
waterboigh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this will be gradual but i think it is a common sentiment that we want to work with people we can see in person That's been my biggest issue, is I miss the people. I miss the coffee runs, the random lunch outings... However, if I lived my ideal schedule I would work from 0600 to 1100 ITO, break for a 'siesta', then finish my work later in the afternoon evening as my schedule allows. And so my co-workers have also h…

I'd happily do quarterly week long company regional on sites. It's expensive for companies to do, if they do it right and cover all costs and travel for sig others/family, but its still cheaper than rent on a big office building.

That's actually a lot to ask of people with children or other dependents in their care.

A quarterly 2-day off-site is far more digestible. Which I agree is still a great compromise in expense and f2f to an office.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#274

Post by hn_version_0023 »

29083011397778 wrote: post #242
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wishlist is: 1. Kill the panopticon (open offices) 2. Employers should bear the cost of ALL commuting The panopticon is truly dystopian, and whenever I’m in one, the hair on the back of my neck never lays flat. I feel watched (because I am) and it isn’t pleasant. Forcing employers to bear the costs of commuting would really up-end things. We’d all be working from home really damned quickly , and I suspect there’d…

You think removing a massive cost of ownership will reduce America's useage of large SUVs and pickups?

It’ll definitely reduce usage in people’s commutes, which is all I’m really claiming.

But no, that guy with the raised truck, rolling coal? Hell no, he’s gonna die before you take his toy away.

Edit: tbh, I think if corps are footing the bill for commuting, it’ll be mass transit for 95% of us. Your employer won’t buy you a Ford F350 superduty to get to work. Maybe you’re gonna get a Honda Fit. Maybe. More likely a bus pass.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#275

Post by rebeccaskinner »

vkou wrote: post #267
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic. Remote work before covid was very different, and I expect in time we'll get back to a lot of that. I worked remotely before the pandemic, and most days I still have ample opportunities to meet and talk to people. Most weeks I'd attend a meetup (I'm in a small city in the midwest and we still had plenty of events to cater to most any nich…

> You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic. Those particular circumstances of the pandemic haven't been with us for almost a year, now, ever since mass vaccination started. I hated WFH in 2020, and I hated WFH in 2021, and I still hate WFH today. Despite having no pandemic restrictions on what I can do today. And even prior to vaccination, if you wanted to go out and do stuff, m…

As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over, it isn't. The legal restrictions might have lifted in most places, but there's a big gap between that and things being back to how they were before- or how they'll be once we've actually hit the endemic part of covid and have a better understanding of what that looks like.

You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and co-working spaces might be open, but enough people are still reluctant to attend events that a lot of things aren't sustainable right now. I certainly wouldn't go meet someone at a restaurant for lunch right now, even though I can. Most of my friends feel the same way. Conferences are still happening, but a lot of conferences remain virtual, and a lot of people who might otherwise attend conferences aren't. Either because they are still concerned about covid today, or because they don't want to risk buying tickets, booking travel, and taking time off for a conference that might be canceled or rescheduled due to yet another surge. Tech meetups have almost entirely stopped. Nearly all meetups were hosted by companies, and while those companies might be talking about RTO for their employees, few of them are interested in hosting large groups of strangers after-hours right now. Even if you could find a venue- attendance would be quite low these days.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#276

Post by deltree7 »

sharemywin wrote: post #20
paulcole wrote: post #5

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why? I'm not a fan of the office because: 1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.

This could have never happened if Jeff and Sanjay were 'working from home'

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...

Who knows Google would have been an also-ran Search Engine company if it weren't for those two solving the right scale problems at the right time.

And no amount of 'Productivity Metrics' can capture these leaps in value creation because it truly is of the 'Unknown-Unknown' category.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#277

Post by nonameiguess »

warning26 wrote: post #10
paulcole wrote: post #5

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

Exactly — yet so many people can’t accept that ANYONE might want to work from an office. My assumption is that people who love WFH are generally suburbanites who can’t fathom getting to work involves anything other than sitting in traffic for two hours.

I live in the dead center of a major city, but it happens to be a city that isn't much of a tech hub. Thanks to widespread work from home, I can now consider job offers from anywhere and work for a hot startup that just IPO'd and get the same benefits of a bull market for engineering labor as someone younger and/or unattached who can easily move halfway across the country for a better job.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#278

Post by jdavis703 »

agumonkey wrote: post #32
jdavis703 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the best remote setups are in low-density places with large homes. People moving from NYC and SF to Wyoming and Austin are going to be living in sprawl. There vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are going to increase: after all it’s not going to be a lockdown where white collar workers stay inside 24/7.

So (honest question), you think people doing remote-friendly jobs are in dense urban areas and don't contribute to car emission much ? so when these guys relocate far away, they're going to switch from public transportation to car ?

I don’t think this, I know this. Today the Census dropped data showing there was a net population loss in SF and NYC. If you look at a map of energy use by county (e.g. Google image search for “energy by county”) it shows folks leaving places like NYC and SF are going to increase their energy use.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#279

Post by vgel »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #255
closeparen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't particularly enjoy the forced, stilted chatter but I do get a lot of value from: a) Being obliged to put on clothes and leave the house. b) Spending a large part of the day at a change of scenery. c) Having other people there, around, ambiently. Spending 23 hours a day alone in your room + 1 hour for outdoor exercise, with occasional weekend visitation, is among the worst punishments the state has at its disp…

You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic. Remote work before covid was very different, and I expect in time we'll get back to a lot of that. I worked remotely before the pandemic, and most days I still have ample opportunities to meet and talk to people. Most weeks I'd attend a meetup (I'm in a small city in the midwest and we still had plenty of events to cater to most any nich…

Thanks for these comments -- this one and your reply to vkou. I started working out of college during the pandemic, and my current gig is remote-native, so I've been kind of dooming about remote work. This is some great advice for how to get past that + a good reminder that COVID is still affecting things -- I've been going with my partner to a board game group and swing classes, but the activation energy is definitely higher than before.

Curious -- have you found anything that (partially?) replaces those opportunities, either online or in-person? I joined a Discord server and gave a talk about JPEG at one of their events, which was fun, but not frequent for me to feel that it's a replacement for having in-person coworkers.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#280

Post by tharkun__ »

30367286 wrote: post #251
tharkun__ wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sufficient compromise would be to allow the people that want regular face to face interactions with coworkers to go to the office and do just that. Not sure what the culture is in your place but at my place everyone has their video on in calls, so there's always face-to-face communication (exceptions can apply of course in some circumstances but that is the general rule) that way. People that want that do go to the…

> But they do it with like minded people This is the main problem I see with your compromise. The self-sorting will create or enforce existing silos. The compromise is not only between you and your employer, but also between you and your coworkers. You might derive no value from face to face interaction, but your coworkers certainly do — and that includes you. I suspect that this self-sorting will result in a very lo…

Definite +1 to my sibling about coming in and keeping the head down.

Not sure which kinds of silos you are talking about. If it's silos as in social circles, that exists with 100% in-office as well. You know, the people that always sit together at lunch, always go out together for lunch or coffee, that meet after work at the pub and the people that eat lunch at their desk or off to the side, drink office-coffee only and don't go to the pub but go home to their family instead.

If you're talking about departmental or team silos those existed with 100% in-office as well. Marketing not talking to Product or Dev? Nothing really changed here I would argue. If anything it might have gotten better because everyone thought it would get worse and very actively tried to do something about it.

Face to face communication works very well over video and I derive enormous value from it. Only using written communication or audio only would suck big time. Especially when first getting to know someone that you've never met in person. But I don't have to sit in the same room with them or be 12 floors away from them for most of the day except for the meeting at three, when we both take the elevator, them 3 floors down, me 9 floors up to talk about something.

I agree that there will probably be a loud cohort of in-office workers that demand others to come back and if they succeed it will spoil the whole deal. But that doesn't get better with a 2-day in-office hybrid compromise either. If anything they would have much more pull already when they demand we go back to 5 days a week "because obviously 3 days of remote work are bad, we only get anything done ever in the 2 forced in-office days".

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